Milwaukee Scene Board Game
Board games might seem like an unlikely source for Milwaukee history, but with a little searching you can enjoy an evening of high-stakes development, vicious strategizing and cursing out your best friends… all while learning a bit about your hometown circa thirty-five years ago.
Cecil Cooper slugged and Henry Maier seemed as though he might be mayor forever when Milwaukee Scene hit stores in 1979. The game was produced by the John N. Hansen game company, part of a series of several locally-themed Monopoly-esque games released around the same time. I had no idea such a thing even existed when I stumbled across one on eBay a few weeks back. Twenty dollars later it was all mine and recently, with a case of PBR in hand, I joined up with a few friends to see just what this Scene was all about.
The gameplay is very similar to that of Monopoly, with a few minor tweaks I’ll mention later. The properties, as expected, are all 1979 local institutions. Some—the Brewers, Mader’s, Wisconsin Ave.—could still be used in a modern version of the game. Others—WZUU radio (now WRIT 95.7), the Schlitz Brewery (closed in 1981) and the Park Avenue Disco (take a free turn if you can even remember that one)—not so much. A tall stack of Scene cards sits in the middle of the board, each with Chance/Community Chest-type instructions on the reverse. Each player is assigned a “power group”—the media, city hall, labor and the Greater Milwaukee Committee. In order to develop your properties, you need “connections” with certain groups—secured with bribes.
Our players for the evening.
The game pieces that came with the set were woefully uninspired (colored triangle-type things), so I dug around and found some more appropriate tokens (above). I am the mini bobblehead from the 2002 MLB All Star Game. My girlfriend Erika is the PBR bottlecap and my buddy Pete is the “good for one play” coin from the old Parkway News Adult Bookstore on Lisbon Ave.
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I Closed Wolski's!
The most amusing part of the game by far is the pile of Scene cards. Just a few turns into our game, someone drew a card that announced Marquette basketball coach Al McGuire had accepted a coaching job at Alverno. A few turns later, I had to pony up $100,000 to be inoculated after going for a swim in the Milwaukee River. Both Pete and Erika managed to finagle the proper connections to start building after just a few trips around the board, but I had no such luck. I managed a connection with the GMC, but lost it when I drew a card that read, “You criticize most recent downtown architecture and are applauded by UWM architecture faculty.”
On her way to jail after causing trouble at County Stadium.
By the time I was able to start building, Pete had built a mall and skywalk on Wisconsin Ave. (bad idea, I told him) and Erika had been jailed for indecent conduct at County Stadium (THAT’S MY GIRL!). I owned both the Bucks and Admirals, but no one landed on their squares (I should have demanded larger and more profitable squares that I was not willing to pay for). Pete ran into a bit of trouble when “in a burst of nostalgia for the sixties,” he attempted an open housing march to the South Side. “Lose front teeth, but collect $50,000 from each player who is still a bigot,” the card instructed him. Hmm. A few turns later, Erika is back in jail for trying to sneak a six-pack into Summerfest.
The gameplay is actually pretty fast and lively. The rents multiply much quicker than in Monopoly and a bad turn or two can wipe you out pretty fast. I skirted disaster when Pete neglected to notice that I had landed on his Lake Drive property, which with the beach front hotel he had built would have run me $390,000. He pulled a knife on me, but I held strong and kept my cash. Erika was ruined when she landed on Bayview, which had been developed with South Shore Drive high-rises. I lingered for a few more turns before being destroyed by—what else?—that damn beach front hotel. I shoveled over all my cash and property and we declared Pete the Champion of the City.
My "empire," soon to be lost on Lake Drive.
Overall, the game was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. It plays quick and has ample material for historical discussion and/or joke-making. While it does have some glaring mistakes—Capitol Drive is spelled “Capital” and the Brewers square lists them as the “Brewer’s”—the local flavor is authentic, both sentimental and mildly self-effacing. And it manages to avoid any glaringly out-of-towner mistakes that suggest the game-makers need to consult a freaking map. The instruction sheet thanks long-time Milwaukee radio personality “Larry the Legend” Johnson, who presumably helped develop the game’s content.
I have a couple more Milwaukee board games in my closet: Milwaukee in a Box, an updated take on the Monopoly theme, and All About Town Milwaukee, a trivia-based game. Maybe I’ll get the crew back together and do a write-up on one of those some day. As soon as Pete gets his teeth fixed and Erika makes bail.
Keep up with what I’m up to at matthewjprigge.com.
